I start each day with a renewed determination to be a better mom than the day before …

+more playfully crawling around the floor with Baby Tad
-less scrubbing and sweeping the floor while Baby Tad cries in his exersaucer

+more booktime with Vivi, even pausing long enough to show her the pictures rather than reading at the speed of light so that I can move on to something more “important”
-less time at the computer

+more tolerance of Ariana’s piano practicing
-less use of the word “crap”

+more hugs
-less hollering

But as dinnertime approaches, the witching hour casts its dark shadow across our home: my nerves fray, my patience is threadbare, my good intentions unravel, and my caustic replies to the increasingly whiney demands of my children make hydrochloric acid seem like sweet nectar. By bedtime, my metamorphosis is no-less dramatic than that of Dr. Jekyll having imbibed his poison potion.

Gratefully, slumber’s restorative powers transform mother and child, and I arise with a renewed determination to be a better mom than the day before …

“Try a little harder to be a little better.” Gordon B. Hinckley

Exhausted from a day of non-stop domesticity, I plopped into my chair at the dinner table, eager to taste the fruits of my many labors.

On the menu this evening was a colorful vegetable platter featuring the latest harvest from our garden, homemade ranch dip, freshly baked homemade rolls still warm from the oven, freshly canned chili sauce infused with tomatoes and onions from our garden, pink lemonade chilled with pristine ice cubes from my newly-cleaned freezer, and a succulent roast that had been simmering in the crock pot all day.

The Makings of Chili Sauce–13 pints of it!

(Of course, Vivi was still wearing her pajamas, and I hadn’t quite gotten around to finding the Disney princess-of-the-day panties so she was running around au naturale … but something’s gotta give on a day like today.)

As BT went to dish Vivi’s dinner, she halted him and, after examining the roast closely, innocently asked, “Daddy, is that poop?”